El Salvador

Have I mentioned that my husband is so good to me? I have??You’ve heard it over and over again? Well, it’s a fact.

Last week, he swept me away to the beach in El Salvador. We arrived on Sunday and drove our rented car to the beach house. We were greeted with warm sun, sea air, and local cuisine (pupusas). A pupusa is a corn tortilla filled with something (in this case beans and cheese), then topped with carrot and cabbage slaw and salsa. Wonderful!

The house came with a caretaker, cook, and housekeeper (who all spoke only Spanish, by the way). I was thrilled to practice, but completely saddened by how much comprehension I’d lost over the years. Still able to say what I needed to say, I found myself having to listen extra hard to recognize words and was often completely lost without sufficient context clues. But of course they have plenty of non-Spanish speakers come and stay so the staff is great with communicating past language barriers.

You might think “won’t three more people there cut into your privacy a bit?” Yeah, I thought that too. But they have their own house and we really had plenty of privacy – it was like they only showed up when we needed them.

And as for a cook… well I’m completely spoiled now. It’s wonderful! After a long hard day of lounging by the beach or the pool, you are summoned with “todos son listos” to an already-set table laid with DELICIOUS food. Afterwards, they take the dishes away and wash them! I was in bliss! It’s only been a few days and I REALLY want Rosi to come get me from the living room for my beans, rice, and chicken tacos. Sigh.

This is the house where we stayed. Found it on VRBO.com. It’s mostly open air and you close it up at night, with air conditioners in each bedroom. The bedrooms are to the right through the doors.

The grounds are beautiful. And the pictures don’t do it justice.

We took a day trip down the Ruta del las Flores. If you’re planning a trip to El Salvador, I recommend this day trip for a weekend as the Thursday that we showed up, many things were closed.

On the weekends, I assume there are weavers at these looms.

In the town of Juayua, you can walk down to the waterfalls. I don’t actually know the correct way to get there because we drove our rental car down this very bumpy, narrow, and steep road until some cops at a road block told us we had to park there and walk. A ways down the path, we walked through the gate that read “private property” and something about a hydroelectric power plant to find the waterfalls. That might have been the correct way to do things, but since so few people were out and about on that fine Thursday, I had no cues. So… who knows? But the falls are pretty and worth the ten-minute walk!

The most frightening part was this path that you were to cross to get to the second waterfall. The picture makes it look harmless enough, but the drop-off to the left is really quite substantial. My heart was racing!

 

Overall, this vacation was SO relaxing! We watched the sunset every evening. I did yoga. We laid on the beach. We got massages. We drank fresh coconut water. We read our books in the hammocks. We listened to the sound of the ocean. It was just what we needed.